Cory Arcangel

By aelwynn on September 30th, 2009, 10:59 pm 2 Comments

So I decided to do a little read up on Cory Arcangel’s work, and three pieces of his particularly caught my attention.

Doogle.com, “Blue” Tube, and Super Mario Clouds.

Doogle.com is a recreation of the google search engine, but everything that you search brings up the message:

An error #HTTP occurred!
Error: HTTP Response 405 Not Found, Server message: Method
Attempt 0 failed.

“Blue” Tube is a 1 second long video of the youtube logo, which used to appear at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.

Super Mario Clouds is an old Mario Brothers cartridge that was changed so that everything except the clouds was erased.

So, to be honest, after viewing the works mentioned here as well as several others from Arcangel’s Internet Profile I wasn’t very inspired. In fact I felt like I wasted a good hour(+) just watching his junk. Then I came across a quote from Arcangle himself, it stated… “Imagine me buying some video equipment off of eBay, turning it on, pressing some random buttons, and then calling whatever comes out my ‘work.’

It was this quote that made me think of the work by Marcel Duchamp, particularly his “readymades” such as the “Fountain” and the “Bicycle Wheel.” These pieces were found objects which Marcel presented as art. At the time that the readymades were being exhibited, there were people that said his work was pointless and not art in the first place. (I’m sure some felt their time had been wasted by viewing the pieces!) Now Duchamp is known as a great artist of the Dadist and Surrealist Movements.

I’ve come to realize that Cory Arcangel seems to be the contemporary Marcel Duchamp. But instead of using tangible found objects, Arcangel uses digital files in all sorts of formats then presents them, as his own work. The coming of ubiquitous digital technology provided a new palette for Arcangel to use which was unavailable to Duchamp. Their concepts are similar but culture has changed.

So, I guess I’ve concluded that I didn’t waste my time after all. I’m giving Arcangel a little more slack now.

(Sorry all the pictures I tried to post were being temperamental and I kept getting error messages)

Category: blog | Tags: "Blue" Tube Cory Arcangel Doogle.com Marcel Duchamp Super Mario Clouds | Permalink: Cory Arcangel